


bury a friend, I wanna end me

by kusege



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: ??????, AU where corpses keep their flesh, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Ghosts, Horror, Insanity, M/M, Manipulation, Maxwell is debatably a good boyf, he kept Wilson alive but at what cost, yes I will include Winona in everything I write what about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 19:34:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20069407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kusege/pseuds/kusege
Summary: “If the thought of food had crossed his mind, then surely it had crossed Wilson’s as well. The man could be incredibly annoying with when he did and didn’t remember that eating was important. It was too much to hope for that Wilson would simply forget, starve himself to death, and allow Maxwell to keep the food he would be stretching between the two of them just for himself. No, barring some new discovery or a gift from the heavens, the two of them were in for insanity and near-starvation until the season ended. Unless...“Alternate title: Well... you didn’t starve????





	bury a friend, I wanna end me

Wilson’s breath was an icy puff, freezing on his beard before the ice crystals barely began to melt, only barely caught in the weak heat of the fire. He heard the dying scream of whatever shadow had crawled up from the depths of Hell to torment the two of them. It should have relieved him, but he just weakly moaned and pressed his face further into Maxwell’s chest. The world was tilting just a bit less, just a bit less piercingly bright, but he knew the respite wouldn’t last. Maxwell hmmed, and patted his head, like Wilson was some feral dog. “It’s al-alright, pal,” he said, voice shaking with cold. “Just a f-f-few more d-days of this, and we’ll th-thaw.”

Wilson nodded, shoulders shaking to ward away freezing. The two of them were all that was left of the once-great camp- they’d been caught off-guard by an unusually early Deerclops attack, which had taken out the majority of the campsite. They’d already been badly prepared, but this was a serious blow. There’d been more casualties than anyone cared to discuss in the resulting fight, and those bodies had been left in the snow away from camp, no one having any kind of energy to bury them. Then, after the healing was done, they realized they lacked any resources to do any revivals. There had been plans, to spend a few days recovering, and then go seeking spiders- but then the other difficulties arose. A nasty convergence of a hound attack in the dead of night saw them sustaining more injuries, more deaths, and then, after a shoddy attempt at healing that put a dent in their food stores, the convergence of so many ghosts meant that the few remaining survivors were soon fending off shadow after shadow.

Now, Wilson and Maxwell huddled pitifully for warmth, surrounded by rubble and puddles of nightmare fuel, picking anything up aside from whatever was necessary to keep a fire burning pointless and wasteful. The ghosts had mostly gone their own ways- watching two people shiver was not exactly entertaining- but a few had stuck around out of some sense of solidarity. Corpses now littered the area around the fire, almost like fresh in the freezing cold. 

Maxwell grit his teeth against the cold, before submitting to his bodily needs. “I’ll go g-get something for the fire,” he muttered, and Wilson only weakly nodded in response. He rose on legs that were frozen half-stiff, and stumbled off. The world spun around before his eyes, even his natural sanity regeneration meaning nothing against the overwhelming force of so many dead.  _ Just a few more days, two unless it runs long,  _ he reminded himself, picking up the remnants of some chest with numb fingers. It would be enough to keep the fire nice and high for quite a while, probably a whole day. That just meant one other thing to worry about.

With a frown, he ran over his mental stock of their food. There wasn’t much left, and, as he thought about it, he realized that there was only  _ maybe _ enough left.  _ If _ he’d counted correctly, and  _ if _ the season didn’t run long, it should be enough to get them through to spring, but even then, it would be a very treacherous situation.  _ Someone _ had managed to rebuild an icebox before their unfortunate demise- he’d be damned if he was going to give her any kind of credit- and had the good sense to fill it with ice. The hound attack had helped keep them fed for a few days, but now there was just ice, nearly unusable. There was a nest of spiders not too far off, half a day’s walk if you could see the road, but the blank cold of the snow and their current mental state left both him and Wilson very unwilling to make any kind of excursion. When spring came and melted away the snow, that would be doable, and they would be able to resurrect their fallen, and feed themselves with some kind of sustainability, and fix everything that had been destroyed without fear of losing fingers. But that was still a few days off, and he needed a good plan now. If only there was more food…

He threw his boards into the fire, and smirked as Wilson recoiled in shock at the sudden blaze. Maxwell returned to his seat by Wilson, and stared into the flickering heat. He heard, just behind them, the scream of some new monster, birthed from nowhere. Wilson moaned again, pitifully, and clutched Maxwell’s chest. Maxwell held him close, listening as the shadow he’d summoned yesterday began to make quick work of the unknown creature. They’d both stopped bothering to look.

If the thought of food had crossed his mind, then surely it had crossed Wilson’s as well. The man could be incredibly annoying with when he did and didn’t remember that eating was important. It was too much to hope for that Wilson would simply forget, starve himself to death, and allow Maxwell to keep the food he  _ would _ be stretching between the two of them just for himself. No, barring some new discovery or a gift from the heavens, the two of them were in for insanity and near-starvation until the season ended. Unless...

The thought made Maxwell’s gaze wander. It had occurred to him before, but he always turned it away as too disgusting, too uncivilized, too plain gross to even truly consider. But, meat was meat… and who said that  _ he _ had to be the one to eat it?

“Wilson,” he said, interrupting the crackling fire and the pained screaming of the nightmare creature, “I need you to listen to me.”

“Mmm?” Wilson said, almost nuzzling him to warm his face up.

“I… I don’t think we have enough food for both of us,” he lied. 

Wilson’s grip tightened, and he sat up, pulling away from Maxwell. His eyes were hollow and blank with exhaustion. Once, this would have made him frantic, but after days of slow and excruciating torture, he just stared, eyes jumping, incapable of focusing for too long. “Shall we d-draw straws then?” Wilson joked. There was no true humor in it, but he giggled anyway. Maxwell did not.

“Wilson, I need both of us alive, or recovering from this will be even harder. I can’t make that many hearts alone.” 

“I appre-ciate it, b-but I don’t th, think I can hold off starving through, through sheer force of will.” Wilson’s giggles were starting to warp, becoming breathy and whimpered. Maxwell ran a hand through his hair to attempt to slow his hyperventilating.

“You won’t need to,” he said, as if soothing a wild animal. “I have an idea, to help us both stay alive.”

Wilson gasped and choked on air at his touch, but slowly, jerkily relaxed, letting his head fall onto Maxwell’s shoulder. “W… what is it?”

“Have you ever wondered what human flesh tastes like?”

In that moment, everything was silent. The ghosts ceased their wordless whispering, the fire seemed a million miles away, so detached from what truly mattered, the world itself taking a breath, horrified at what it had just heard. With aching heads and twitching eyes, Maxwell and Wilson both glanced to the edges of camp, where here and there were bodies, skin the ashen blue of frozen flesh, completely untouched. 

“You c-can’t be serious.”

“Hey, I know it’s not really considered good, but… meat is meat, pal.”

“I-I would rather- I would  _ never _ \- I think I w-would take starving, i-if these are my, options.” Wilson did not stop hugging Maxwell.

“Oh, hush. Don’t be so dramatic.” Maxwell pet his head, and snuck a kiss to his forehead. “Listen, Wilson, I wouldn’t suggest this if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. What kind of monster would I have to be?”

The shadow creature died, an uneven wail sending shivers up their spines. Wilson opened his mouth. 

“Don’t answer that.”

Wilson closed his mouth, and then sighed. “I’m sure it would be helpful, for me to… do that. But I can’t… it’s just  _ wrong _ , isn’t it?” 

“Do right and wrong really matter, when it comes down to survival?” Maxwell asked, not expecting to hear Wilson laugh.

“I wish it did,” he said, manic giggling starting back up again. “B-but it never really s, seems to, does it? It’s just… madness, k-killing, living, dying, over and o-over and over and over until  _ never _ , it never ends, it’s never going to end-“

“Hey. Hey!” Maxwell pet Wilson’s head more, earning a shivered whimper for his troubles. “Relax, alright? Stressing yourself out with thoughts like that isn’t going to help anyone.” Wilson sniffled. “Now, hear me out. They don’t need their bodies. They’re already dead. When we bring them back, they’ll get a new one. Unless you do this, they’re just going to be wasted, Wilson.”

Wilson hummed sadly, sound like a broken trumpet, but he said nothing. Maxwell continued.

“Wouldn’t you like to actually get to eat your fill, or close to it? Sure, everyone out here is scrawny and struggling, but they’re still people. They’re full of organs, and they have to have  _ some _ muscle to make it out here. Plenty of potential there. Hell,” he said, eyeing one particular corpse with a wicked grin, “the engineer’s actually got some real meat on her.”

The sound of an angry ghost made them both flinch, as the fire rose ever so slightly higher. Wilson whined, hands going up to pull at his hair, trying to keep a hold on himself. “I- I can’t, I c-can’t, I’m sorry Maxwell I j-just can’t d-do this, I can’t, I shouldn’t, I can’t-“ He gasped and clutched at his stomach, hunger pangs sending panic and pain through his body. 

Maxwell did not react, not for a long minute. Then, he hugged Wilson from behind, pulling him close, hiding his face in his ridiculous hair. “It’s alright, love, I understand… but can I say one last thing?” Wilson nodded yes, so slightly that Maxwell was sure he wouldn’t have noticed if their heads hadn’t been touching right then.

“You could record how it tastes. For science.”

Wilson’s head ached, the world spun, his body shivered with cold and fear and adrenaline. His stomach was empty, and turned to his mind in a frenzied, frustrated craze, looking for sustenance of any kind. His mind was swimming, scientific precision buried and lost under layer after layer of shadow and stress, Maxwell’s affection only making it worse, like skin growing back over splinters. Everything was too bright and too dark and too loud and too much, and he just wanted to make the pain stop. Science. Science would help. Eating would help. Food was never the wrong choice. In this state, he couldn’t remember why it was he’d been crying, or why it really mattered. Everything was going to be alright.

“Yeah…” he said, more of a sigh than anything, before standing up. Maxwell watched in shock, as he grabbed an axe that had been left in the ground when they decided wood runs just weren’t worth it in the long run. 

“Where are you going with that, pal?” His voice was shot through with uncertainty, half-hopeful, half deeply afraid.

“Gonna…” Wilson turned around to look at him, looking every inch the madman he was. “Gonna go get something to eat.” 

Another nightmare spawned. Wilson’s hands shook. The fire flared up again. Maxwell smiled.

“Glad to hear it,” he said. 

Wilson nodded, distant, as if an afterthought. His brain was overcome, screaming in hunger. The world swirled, objects bleeding into one another as if cheap prints running in the rain, his feet sinking so deep into the snow he thought the Earth would swallow him whole, spit out the bones. The world was red and set upon by tendrils of darkness, and he could barely see straight. Behind him, the slow shuffle-shuffle of a nightmare, crawling for him, gaping maw opening, and then its cry as it was attacked, and Wilson kept walking. He swore he saw his own footprints expand, holes in the snow massive, too large, and then he realized he’d started walking in a circle, and he lurched off his course at a tangent. Not too far away now, the body, half-covered in snow, drifts pushed up against its back, leaving the face just exposed.

As he heard the death-cry of the nightmare, Wilson dropped his axe, and fell face-first into the snow. It was cold, and nearly buried him, and his head spun like he’d been drinking. How could he even be considering this? It was horrifying, or supposed to be, but he could barely feel it. Whatever part of his brain insisted on propriety was frozen, starved, dead and gone and all he had was the faded memory of it. No, now all he felt was hunger, primal and devoid of empathy, and it was that primal instinct that drove him to his feet, drove him to pick up his axe again, snow burning a frozen hole into his scalp. He stumbled forward on numb feet, ankles frozen stiff, one more step, one more, the body was swimming before him- he could only call it “the body”, couldn’t bear to think of it as anything else.

He heard the half-angry, distant call of a ghost from right behind him. He knew what she wanted, but if he turned to look, it would only make this worse. It was what they needed to do, to survive, she’d understand, right? His fingers were nearly impossible to flex, but he did, with the crackle of ice crystals underneath the surface. Slowly, with the gentleness of a thief, he moved for the body, kneeling in the snow, shivering as it fell around him, burying his legs. A deep, trembling breath, ice crystals forming on his beard, and frozen hands reached out to brush the snow away from the body. Bile rose in Wilson’s throat as touched it. The frostbitten meat could only barely be considered edible, like this. He’d have to cook it, to ensure he experienced the fewest ill effects from- from the-

He broke down in shivered sobs. The tears froze in his beard, only barely making it out of his eyes. He could call it meat and a body all he wanted, this was still his  _ friend _ , a fellow survivor in this hell, and she was right there and she was going to watch, and this wasn’t right, none of this was right, this was horrific and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to  _ live _ and go through with this, wouldn’t it be better to die untainted? Wilson hugged himself, shaking in the snow, hands gripping his shoulders like a lifeline. How could this be worth it? How… 

_ Maxwell needed him _ , he thought, and he gasped, grabbing the axe once more, lungs spasming around his panic and fear and drive.  _ Please, please Winona, don’t watch, please don’t watch… _ With his free hand, he piled snow over the head, covering the face, obscuring it from his own view. Maybe it would be easier, like this.

The cold and the ghosts and his own horror at what he was doing made his hands unsteady, as he grabbed at the arm closest to him, and, with a choking laughing sob, cut

it

_ off- _

And now it was separate, just meat on bone with some skin and fabric in the way, and he hastily threw the remnants of clothing aside, discarding them so he was left with only frozen grey-pink-blue dead flesh. Like this, with the world blurred and in extremes and with the sun setting, dusk making everything less clear, he could almost trick himself into not thinking about who this had been, how, based on the wild echoing wordless screams, she was  _ watching _ , could almost make himself think this was just another animal. God, he was a damn scavenger now, a vulture going for faceless carrion, refusing to let even death be sacred.

With the sickening crunch of ice shattering, Wilson cut the meat away from the bone, grip on his axe poor and inconsistent. It did not go easy, like it would have thawed, every inch had to be earned, hacked off, with a burst of red-brown bloody ice after every swing. Slowly, chunks of muscle broke away, fatless and lean, and frostbitten a sick flesh-stained grey. He set them down in the snow next to him, one two three four, bone now clear through the remaining frozen shreds of flesh. He left the hand intact- fingers contained no muscle, and any shreds of meat he could gain from the hand wouldn’t be worth the effort. Instead, he gathered up the pieces, one two three four, and shoved them within his vest, to ensure his unsteady hands didn’t drop them.

He stood up, legs aching with cold, this close to not aching any more, and stumbled back off for camp, trying to ignore the empty, white holes staring at him, as if asking  _ why _ , asking  _ how could you _ , asking  _ do you care _ , asking  _ do you know the children saw, _ and of course Wilson knew, he’d seen them from the corner of his eyes, but he couldn’t find it in him to care, they’d seen worse before and they’d see worse again, this was just one of many terrible terrible things they never should have had to see. He leaned on his axe for some sense of support, making his way for the campfire, where Maxwell sat, watching him. He was ever so faintly smiling.

“Welcome back, pal. How’re you feeling?” he asked. Wilson stared back, and he stood up with a sigh. “God, look at you, you’re half frozen. Get closer to the fire, before you lose your fingers. I think you’ll find you want those.” Maxwell half-carried, half-dragged Wilson until he was sitting just in front of the fire, not so strong as to melt his face off, but plenty warm to heat him. He grumbled under his breath as he peeled Wilson’s hands off his axe, and started massaging them gently. “Let me know if this starts to hurt, it’s supposed to once it all starts warming back up.”

Wilson hummed, thoughts distant and hazy with cold. Some deep, unknown part of him was screaming in anguish, but the rest of him was satisfied with the warmth and comfort and Maxwell’s touch. He let himself relax, soothed and safe, losing himself in the flickering light of the fire. Eventually, his hands began to ache, and he pulled them from Maxwell’s grip with a mumbled “enough.” At some point, another nightmare had been born, he could hear it struggling with Maxwell’s shadow. The meat was starting to thaw, starting to bleed through his vest.  _ Good thing it’s already red,  _ he thought.

They sat for a minute, Maxwell on a rock and Wilson on the bare ground, before Maxwell stood, muttering something about more wood. Wilson used it as an opportunity to pull out the meat. It was no more appetizing half-thawed, the blood starting to ooze out onto his bare hands. The flesh itself looked petrified. Thoughts of science flitted through his mind, but were dismissed as soon as they made themselves known. It felt like too much right now. The skin was a burnt icy blue, and he knew if he looked close enough he would be able to see small scars, injuries sustained in earlier seasons, since healed over. He knew if he thought long enough, he would be able to place each injury, remember the inciting incident. He didn’t want to think that long. He didn’t want to think at all.

He found the axe by touch, incapable of looking away from the meat in his hand. He swore, maybe, that he could see it pulsate with the heartbeat, veins and arteries still struggling against the cold’s constraints- or was that just the world going fuzzy again? Was it just his own heartbeat, racing and heavy, and tactile through his fingertips? Was he seeing things, or was the blood starting to drip onto the snow, down his wrist, up his arm? 

With a bit of struggle, Wilson managed to cut the flesh into a manageable size, smaller chunks that he’d be able to work with. He grit his teeth as he struggled with a stick, meat still too frozen to go on easy. His hands tightened, making the flesh crunch sickeningly, ice within shattering and causing a spurt of brown-red blood, that hit his face, almost made him lose his nerve, almost made him vomit. Barely, by his fingernails, he held onto himself, and with a savage grunt, he skewered the piece he held, and then a second, and a third. He ignored the remaining ones, leaving them cut and oozing brown in the snow. The stick went over the fire, end dug into the ground to keep it from going too close to the flames. Then, finally, Wilson relaxed, dropping the axe down again, knowing he wouldn’t need it for a while yet, knowing he could be done, knowing that soon he would be eating, and hopefully, that would make everything okay.

He stared, blank, empty, at nothing, in the direction of the fire, not seeing it. He instead saw memories, brief flashes of other people, talking, laughing, being human, something Wilson wished he could remember. Laughter played, warped, going from harmless giggling of memory to a horrific vicious cackle, attacking him, mocking him. His vision shook and trembled with stress and fear and hunger. A nightmare screamed out in victory behind him before quickly dying, and Wilson couldn’t even be bothered to turn and look. Moving would mean admitting his existence, showing himself, he would let someone find him, as of right now he didn’t know where she was and hoped things would stay that way, he saw nothing and hoped things would stay that way. He couldn’t know what kind of flesh it was if he was blind, right? He couldn’t be blamed. It wasn’t his fault, just what he had to do… 

A hand fell onto his shoulder, and Wilson barely moved. “Had to replace my shadow, got more stuff for the fire.” Maxwell sat behind him. Wilson just stared forward. He didn’t even blink. 

“...c’mon, Higgsbury, was it really that terrible?”

Wilson bit his lip.

“I’m sure that it’s not so bad as you think.”

He let his head drop toward the ground, as if praying.

“...Wilson.”

Wilson took a breath, deep and stuttering, as if his body wanted to stop halfway through, and then looked back up, turning toward Maxwell. He was worn, exhaustion clear on his lined face, shadows under his eyes more pronounced than normal. Wilson almost chuckled to see it, seeing the way this winter, this world was destroying them both. Soon there would be only the thin vestiges of humanity left for them both, not that Maxwell was ever fully human. But Wilson couldn’t feel anything right now other than agonized distress, wasn’t sure if he was human or wild or some new horrific Constant-creature. Maxwell looked down on him, black eyes strange, almost apologetic for a moment, before he blinked, and they were normal, slightly annoyed again. “I think your… meat is done.”

A sick feeling rose in Wilson’s stomach- or was it just the sensation of being eaten from the inside out, acids turning on his own body, breaking down his own tissue?- but he saw that Maxwell was right. The frost was gone from the surface of the meat, and the revolting grey flesh was now tough-looking, melting blood no longer dripping from it, almost starting to char where it was closest to the fire. It did look done, or close to it, and at this point Wilson really couldn’t be bothered one way or the other. 

He fought the stick up out of the ground, arms weak with exhaustion, and- oh, and there was Winona. She stared at him from across the fire, had he just missed her or was this a new position she had taken? Wilson stared back, seeing nothing and everything in her eyes, frustration, anger, exhaustion, sadness, worry, and she saw only hunger and fear. She could not give her permission in this form, had no way of expressing it, and it would not have mattered one way or the other. Wilson broke their staring contest, turning away from her judgement, and slid one of the pieces of her flesh off his makeshift skewer. It was warm, hot even, and flakes of ash caught his hand here and there, staining it black.

He stared at it, feeling sick, with himself, with the world, with his life, and reflected, maybe, that it would be worth it to just let himself starve, and then when he revived he could help Maxwell, as soon as he revived, just not now, he couldn’t do it now, couldn’t do anything now, constantly crazed and weak with hunger and resorting to  _ cannibalism _ to fill his stomach, god this life was twisted, and he was this close to throwing every piece of meat into the fire and jumping in himself, anything to not have to do this, anything…

An annoyed tapping on his head. Wilson turned, face drawn with fear, and Maxwell frowned back down at him, sympathy struggling with frustration. “It’s not getting any better,” Maxwell said, voice hushed and scraping, as if the ghosts wouldn’t hear him if he was quiet. “Just get it over with, alright? It’ll all be better then, I promise.”

Wilson nodded, slow and careful, without looking away. His arm rose, hand drawing closer to his mouth. Dread grew in the space within his chest that his stomach had once filled, but it would be better after he ate, and without looking to what he held, holding Maxwell’s gaze, Wilson bit down into the meat. 

It was tasteless, or maybe that was a reflection on his own body, blocking everything out and making it taste like dust. He felt liquid, clear and reeking, flow out over his lips and down his chin. The texture was like wet cork, disintegrating under force, the damaged flesh incapable of holding itself together like it was grown to. Chewing was a wholly regrettable experience, filling his mouth with warm pulp. And then, he swallowed, choking down the pitiful excuse for sustenance. It rolled down into his gut, feeling heavy, like gravel in his stomach. 

He didn’t have to persuade himself to take a second bite, doing it on autopilot, and then the third was taken readily. The food was  _ good  _ inside him, hollow burning feeling gone and replaced with warm meat. Maybe it was because he was half-starved, maybe that he’d been sustaining himself mostly on tasteless rotting food the last few days, maybe that he was insane and this was how you felt when you saw shadows that hurt you... but it was  _ delicious. _ He lost himself in the act of devouring, burying himself in the rush of finally getting to eat something like fresh, something like filling, something real. Maybe he hadn’t killed it himself, but he could see himself living like this, in this moment it was the best thing he’d ever eaten.

Wilson found himself ravenous, ripping flesh away with his teeth. There was no hesitation, no thought of decency or society or of scarring anyone around him, or even of anyone around him. Long gone was any sense of propriety. He was wild with starvation, almost feral with it, and his head pulsed with insanity, and he kept eating. The more he ate, the fuller he got, the more he relaxed, the act of eating soothing himself, securing his instincts, knowing that yes, yes, he was in fact going to live. His adrenaline slowly let up, the drive to survive satisfied. The wildness faded away into a sated and shaky peace.

A shadow screamed, and collapsed, in an oozing black pile.

Wilson opened his eyes. The meat he had cooked was nearly gone, just one last piece held in his hand. Maxwell was eating something of his own, likely far less fresh, but also some form of real food, rather than Wilson’s makeshift attempt at it. His chest was heavy, the unusual weight of fullness compounding on something he tentatively called guilt. There was blood in his mouth, mucking up his beard, echoing down his throat and up into his nose- something hadn’t been fully cooked. He was satisfied. He was horrified. He started to sob.

Maxwell looked down at him, where he sat on the ground and shook, and pulled him close. “Shhh, it’s alright, love, it’s okay.” He started to pet Wilson’s head, soothing, relaxing him, but he only cried louder. Maxwell sighed. “I know, I know, it’s hard, but you made the right choice. I promise, Wilson, it was all you could have done. Don’t you feel better now?” He patted Wilson’s stomach with one hand. “You had to eat, love. I know it’s not fun, but you had to eat, okay? And now, everything is okay.”

Wilson sniffled, and nodded… and then held his hand out to Maxwell. Maxwell looked down, seeing the last bite of meat. “For me? Are you sure?” 

Wilson just nodded again. Maxwell grinned, soft but pleased. “Well, don’t mind if I do.” A black hand picked the flesh up delicately, shadowed claws handling it like it might bite, and Maxwell dropped it into his mouth. Wilson watched in horrified awe, noting the way his sharp teeth tore it down in an instant, unlike his own hasty, crushing chewing. He saw Maxwell swallow, Adam’s apple bobbing with the force of it, and shivered as Maxwell wiped a trace of blood away from his lips.

The fire expanded again, and Wilson started to cry, knowing that she was angry, trying to tell them she was angry, and it brought him back to an even harsher plane of reality. He had done more than eaten another human today, he’d eaten a  _ friend. _ “I’m sorry,” he gasped, as Maxwell hugged him closer. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t- I had to, I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to do anything, I had to, please, please I’m sorry, please don’t be mad, please-!”

The sobbing began in earnest, and he clung to Maxwell’s leg, burying his face in his knee as if to hide himself. Maxwell just hummed and resumed petting his head. “You did the right thing, Wilson,” he murmured. “You’re such a good boy, I’m so proud of you. It was hard, wasn’t it? But you pulled through for me. I’m so proud of you, you did so well.”

Wilson continued to cry and Maxwell continued to whisper calming nothings to him, sweet promises and reassurances, coaxing him down from his distress with a trained talent for misdirection. Slowly, as dusk turned to night, Wilson began to really, truly relax, grip on reality fading with exhaustion and ever-slipping sanity. Maxwell looked on as he passed out, still holding onto his leg like a lifeline, face stained with blood and tear tracks. One hand stayed on his head, petting him, but the other dipped down into the snow, lightly rubbing it across his skin, washing away the stains, the signs of the day. Without them present, one could hardly tell what kind of mental ordeal Wilson had been through. 

Maxwell threw another board onto the fire, and smiled as it expanded, lighting the area far better. He could just hear the distant screams of some new nightmare over the crackling fire. He could also hear, just barely, the whispered judgement of the ghosts. There was a small collection, four or so, at the edge of camp, speaking to one another, only visible due to their thin glows. He was sure they were disgusted. Well, that was their business. Meat was meat, and Wilson had made the choice he had to. They didn’t have to watch Wilson eat. They’d chosen to.

He pressed a kiss to Wilson’s scalp, and Wilson hummed pleasantly in his sleep. Maxwell smiled, pride welling up within him. They’d both done so well today. 

His back was cold and his face was fire-hot. He hadn’t properly slept in days. He’d eaten, but not too much, in the interest of stretching the food he still had, so he was still somewhat hungry. He almost envied Wilson and his full stomach. The darkness of the night pulsed around him, oppressive and intense, trying to force its way to him against the firelight. But Maxwell wasn’t afraid. He knew the two of them would make it just fine. 

**Author's Note:**

> Epilogue scene
> 
> Maxwell: *opens Codex Umbra*
> 
> Charlie’s handwriting, across two entire pages: what the hell is wrong with you? What the fuck was that? Spring will not be merciful.
> 
> Maxwell: https://youtu.be/8fPsJwtzvaY
> 
> Anyways please leave comments they’re the only thing I live for other than my girlfriend


End file.
